Category Archives: Appreciation

Are you even aware of the service you bring to the world?

Click on the link to watch the video for a one-minute inspirational blast!

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com

Do ever feel like, “Hey, where’s the money?”

Click on the link to watch the video for a one-minute inspirational blast!

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

I have a sad story. The other week I lost a ten-dollar bill. (Well, not too sad. It could’ve been worse. Or I guess it could’ve been better. I could still have that ten-dollar bill.)

In retrospect, I think what happened is that I gave a cashier a ten instead of a one, and he didn’t notice my mistake.

So through my lack of attention, I instantly lost nine bucks. Now I’ve had the skills to count money since early grade school, but in my distraction I didn’t use them to appreciate and contain my abundance.

The money I suddenly lost set me pondering:

How much of the abundance in our lives do we lose sight of each day because of our inattention to it?

We have the skills to count our blessings, to be appreciative of our talents, but if we are distracted with other stuff like what went wrong in the past, what is going wrong right now, or what might hypothetically go wrong in the future, our abundance can literally slip right through our fingers as I let that ten-dollar bill slip through mine.

We can choose to focus on noticing our abundance. WHEN WE APPRECIATE OUR ABUNDANCE WE CAN LITERALLY SAVE IT FROM BEING LOST.

Now I’m much more alert when I’m counting out money, and simply through this alertness, I have more of it.

Game of the Day

How can you be more alert to the abundance in your life?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

How do you receive a compliment?

Click on the link to watch the video for a one-minute inspirational blast!

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

This afternoon I drove to get my car washed. I figured that it would take maybe 10 or 15 minutes tops to do the inside and out. The attendant who greeted me offered me the Manager’s Special and said it will take AT LEAST HALF AN HOUR to get my car done. NOW I DID NOT FIND THAT SPECIAL. I mean I was already OVERWHELMED with everything on my TO-DO LIST, and let me tell you, waiting an extra FIFTEEN minutes WAS NOT ONE OF THE ITEMS ON MY LIST.

(By the way, the words in caps equal drama in my head.)

Do you ever have those days where you are overwhelmed and just feel that you don’t have an extra 15 minutes?

In that moment, I realized I had a BUSY DAY ahead of me and that I already felt WAY BEHIND and now to get my car the way I wanted it, I had to wait 30 MINUTES or more with NOTHING TO DO. Let me define nothing to do: I didn’t have my calendar. I didn’t have my notebook. I didn’t even have text messages to catch up on and it was in the middle of a workday so not even a good time to call people. I mean I had NOTHING TO DO!

Have you ever been in this situation? How did you handle it?

Well, THIS WAS A PREDICAMENT. My first thought was, “How can I get out of this one? Should I drive home quickly and get something to work on?” No, that would take even more time. Then I thought, “Oh, good, they have a gift shop, I can just buy a notebook and write. SO I CAN AT LEAST BE DOING SOMETHING.” But guess what? Their gift shop was a NOTEBOOK-LESS GIFT SHOP. And to make matters worse, there weren’t any other promising NOTEBOOK ABUNDANT stores close by.

How would you spend a half hour or more at the car wash with nothing to do?

I considered more options. In the waiting area, there were free magazines to read or there were greeting cards I could peruse in the gift shop. But neither option seemed to be PRODUCTIVE.

So, with nothing else to do, I took a seat on a bench out by where the cars come out when they are done and JUST SAT AND WAITED. For the first five or ten minutes, simply waiting was kind of hard.

Then I began to really notice where I was. Now I thought I already knew where I was. I was at a car wash on Pacific Highway JUST WAITING.

But in another way, I realized that I had no idea where I was. It had been a frustrating blur in my busy day.

Gradually I began to notice the blue sky and the fact that the Big Bay of San Diego was shimmering a block away. There was a cruise ship dock down there. Palm trees swayed in the wind close by.

And suddenly I noticed how glad I was to have the luxury of sitting and waiting with nothing to do. I was literally in paradise. But until I sat down with nothing to do, I hadn’t noticed.

The place I was became beautiful because I sat and noticed it. Was it beautiful before I sat and noticed it? Sure it was, but I wasn’t aware of it.

My car wash experience has got me thinking. Maybe success in life is as much about pausing to notice the wonder of where we are at right now, as it is taking the actions to be successful.

Maybe part of getting ahead is simply noticing how far ahead we are and pausing to appreciate it.

Game of the Day

How will you really notice where you are today?

How will you appreciate where you are today?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

I think we ought to celebrate the Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks as a Valentine’s Day Hero and I’ll tell you why. Wikipedia describes the act of heroism that Rosa Parks is commonly remembered for by stating, “On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.” *

We know who Rosa Parks is because she was willing to claim her seat and her importance. She silently said a Heroic Yes to her own worth. By claiming her importance, she offered a new level of freedom to the world. Rosa Parks once said, “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free…so other people would be also free.” **

Rosa Park sets a vivid example of how profoundly important self-love is.

By truly loving all that you are, you free yourself from the shackles of self-doubt and self-hate.

This Valentine’s Day claim your importance and your seat in the world. Be your own Valentine first.

Then you can truly give your Valentines to others because your Valentines are full of your love.

When you say, “I love you,” that “I” is priceless. If you value the “I” that is you as priceless, the “I” that you give when declaring, “I love you” is truly worth more than mountains of diamonds and gold.

Rosa Parks’ self-love and recognition of her priceless value still blesses the world today.

Loving ourselves is truly one of the most profound gifts that we can offer to the people we love and to the world this Valentine’s Day.

Game of the Day

How are you going to claim your importance and your seat in the world today?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.

Can you imagine traveling to your favorite vacation destination and choosing to stay in the hotel room the whole time with the curtains shut? There would be reasons to choose this option, of course, spending one’s whole vacation in the hotel room would most likely be more predictable, safer, and less expensive, than going out to explore. But still we wouldn’t dream of choosing this option.

For when we’re on vacation, we’re primed to explore and try new things. We are natural explorers. We savor and delight in what we find.

However once we’re home, it is, at times, much easier for us to fall into routines where we basically live inside our metaphorical hotel room of the predictable, the safer, and the less expensive.

Home Sweet Home can become Home Sweet Dull.

Since we’re in our daily routines most of the time and go on vacations relatively rarely, our home territory is the natural ground for us to develop our exploration muscles.

It is natural to think, “Well I’ve done everything there is to do around where I live;” or “Where I live is just boring.”

I hear you. I have felt like that at times. But really consider the following two questions and see if they don’t excite your urge for Home Sweet Exploration.

How much of the area within an hour drive of your home haven’t you explored yet?

How many activities, shops, and restaurants within an hour’s drive of your home haven’t you tried yet?

Game of the Day

What is your next step in exploring your home territory as if it were your favorite vacation destination?

Jason Freeman is a professional writer, and a one-of-a-kind public speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Heroic Yes! Productions. Jason has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Nebraska. He knows the pain of perceiving one’s life through a lens of limitation and also the thrill of moving beyond that mindset. For more information on Jason’s powerful message, or to book him to present to your organization, go to www.HeroicYesProductions.com.